Movie Review: The Seeds of Time

Reader Contribution by Sue Van Slooten
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A short time ago, I was privileged to preview a screening of a brand new movie, The Seeds of Time, directed and produced by Sandy McLeod. I came across this movie after being sent a trailer by the Bread Lab at Washington State University, Mount Vernon, took a look, and really liked what I saw. It also had a link for obtaining the viewing rights for your group, school, whatever. What group? Then I thought, yes, I do volunteer once a week for The Table, a community kitchen/food bank/social advocacy organization. Yes! So, filled out the online form and waited. Didn’t have long to wait. Co-producer J.D. Marlow got right back to me explaining the details, and how to go about this. To make a long story short, I got the rights, the Table was thrilled to be able to show it at their movie night, and the DVD was shipped. I was.

The Table had me watch the movie first to see what I thought. It is a thoroughly impressive movie, with gorgeous cinematography. The main character is Dr. Cary Fowler, a man who has devoted his life to agriculture, seeds, and hopefully, not to be overly dramatic, humanity. I say hopefully, because agriculture as we know it today is teetering on the edge of disaster: Our crop diversity is at an all time low, between mono-cropping and the extinction of many ancient varieties of food crops. The statistic that brings this all home? 93 percent of varieties have gone extinct since 1903. More about this later. Couple this with the ongoing crisis of climate change, and the plants just can’t adapt fast enough to save our vulnerable necks.

The movie follows Dr. Fowler among others on a journey that takes you completely around the world, but two locations stand out: Svalbard, Norway, and Peru. Svalbard has become the Ark for seeds. Seeds are kept in the deep freeze from collections sent there from all over, be it the U.S., Canada, the Ukraine, Switzerland, Russia, as well as locations from the Far East and Africa. Peru is unique, because the Peruvian potato farmers are desperately attempting to keep, and in a lot of cases, revive, old varieties of their potatoes. It is quite a moving experience seeing them digging their potatoes in their beautiful native dress, coming together with other local groups that didn’t all get along, just to save their heirloom potatoes. You see, there are two ways to save a variety: Put it in a seed bank, or grow it. They took the latter option. They also shared their potato seed so they could be kept for the future. Incidentally, it should be noted that the potato is native to Peru, and has been grown there for at least 13,000 years. That’s right, 13,000 years, and they are threatened now within a generation with extinction from the land becoming too warm.

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